Delcy Rodriguez, the VP Trump says replaced Maduro
Below are some facts about Delcy Rodriguez, who US President Donald Trump said at a press conference was “sworn in” as president of Venezuela after Nicolas Maduro was captured by US forces.
The Venezuelan government did not announce that Rodriguez had been sworn in, and multiple sources told Reuters that he was in Russia, but the Russian state news agency denied the report.
Trump said the United States would govern Venezuela for the foreseeable future and that Rodriguez said he was “willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
* Maduro called Rodriguez a “tiger” for his tenacious defense of his socialist government.
* He works closely with his brother, Jorge Rodriguez, who is president of the National Assembly legislature.
* Rodriguez, 56, a native of Caracas, was born May 18, 1969, and is the daughter of Jorge Antonio Rodriguez, the leftist guerrilla fighter who founded the revolutionary Liga Socialista party in the 1970s.
* Rodríguez’s roles as finance and oil minister, which he held simultaneously as vice president, made him a key figure in the management of Venezuela’s economy and wielded great influence over the country’s withered private sector. He implemented orthodox economic policies in order to combat excessive inflation.
* In a voicemail broadcast on state television on Saturday, he called on the US government to provide proof of life of Maduro and his wife, but his exact whereabouts are unknown.
* He is a lawyer who graduated from the Universidad Central de Venezuela and has risen rapidly through the political ranks over the past decade, serving as Minister of Communications and Information from 2013 to 2014.
* Rodriguez, known as a designer fashionista, was foreign minister from 2014 to 2017, during which time he tried to disrupt a meeting of the Mercosur trade bloc in Buenos Aires after Venezuela was suspended from the group.
* In 2017, he took office as president of the pro-government Constituent Assembly, which expanded Maduro’s powers.
* Rodriguez was named vice president in June 2018, and Maduro announced the appointment in X, describing her as “a young woman, brave, experienced, the daughter of a martyr, a revolutionary and tested in a thousand battles.”
* In August 2024, Maduro added the oil ministry to Rodriguez’s portfolio, where he was tasked with managing escalating U.S. sanctions on the country’s most important industry.
